Meet the AncestoriesXR Founder – Retha Hill

I am Retha Hill, founder of AncestoriesXR. We call it AXR for short. I’ve been a journalist since I was 16, working for the biggest names in news and entertainment: The Detroit Free Press (my hometown newspaper), The Charlotte Observer, and The Washington Post. I was even a founding editor of Washingtonpost.com in 1995. In 1999, I was the founding content vice president who built BET.com. That was back in the stone age of the Internet.

When I left the Washington Post newsroom for our online service in 1995, many coworkers thought I was crazy. And those were the enlightened ones. They were somewhat aware of this online thing. The others thought I was simply leaving. They gave me a going-away party in the newsroom. With cake. They didn’t quite get that I was actually going to a space in an alcove right above the employee cafeteria. Those colleagues told me to stay in touch. But that was the situation back then. The vast amount of journalists couldn’t foresee that readers would want anything to do with online or that it could pose a threat to our storied traditions — at least not for decades to come. Over the years, when I saw some of those colleagues at conferences, they asked me: How did you know that online would be as big as it is? It seemed apparent to me that people would want to be able to get news and information whenever they wanted it, chat with our famed columnists, re-live the Watergate reporting that forced President Nixon to resign, and link out to any number of other places on the web.

But the biggest potential of online for me has always been the ability to tell and show interesting stories and to be able to take people back in time to understand their present. To let them explore history. To map our futures in a 3D environment. That’s why I’m so passionate about AncestoriesXR. We, as individuals and as a nation, have so many interesting stories that we want to share with our family, our friends, and others. Like the pharaohs of Egypt, the cave people of southern France, and the Pueblo dwellers of the Chaco Canyon, people want to leave a record of their existence to future generations. While the genealogy search firms do a fantastic job of helping their members find the documents they need and the biological proof of their origins, I’ve always thought the storytelling part was lacking.

That’s how AncestoriesXR was born. We want to bring your family stories to life using immersive media. This medium can help us see, feel, and explore each other’s familial stories so they are not forgotten.

We are so glad to have you in our community on this journey.

Sincerely,

Retha Hill